Fat Bald Jeff


Book Description

“A slacker hell [with] a disgruntled, wisecracking protagonist . . . A hilarious send-up of hippies and hipsters” from the author of Permanent Record (Kirkus Reviews). Addie Prewitt is a copyeditor for the National Association of Libraries. When her boss, the repulsive Coddles, heaps another new project on her department—with no additional remuneration naturally—she decides she’s had enough. While spending her days battling with her roommate about whether Black Sabbath or Neil Diamond will occupy the turntable and her nights beating her overeager suitor away from the door of her boudoir, Addie discovers a piece of vile pornography in Coddles’s dry cleaning. Finally, she has the means to retaliate. Meanwhile, Fat Bald Jeff, the tech-support guy who has to cope with her mechanical self-sabotage, turns out to be even more disaffected than she, and they hatch the ultimate plan to give the pigs some of their own medicine. With a surreal wit and a keen eye that bring to mind Lily Tomlin set loose in Dilbert-world, Fat Bald Jeff is a sharp satire and a paean to the petty humiliations of workers everywhere. “Stella provides a lot of freshly imagined fun . . . There are so many funny lines and scenes that even librarians may like it. As for the lumpen—they’ll love it.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Warm the pockets of your heart watching this bereft waif find a little happiness in life.” —Mademoiselle “Amusing . . . caustic . . . entertaining . . . Read on company time!” —US Weekly “A fun, harmless, and quick read. Don’t look for inspiration, just amusement.” —Booklist




Permanent Record


Book Description

Having left public school under mysterious circumstances, sixteen-year-old junior Badi Hessamizadeh enters Magnificat Academy, where he struggles with his Iranian-American identity, his clinical depression, and bullies.




Tattoo Machine


Book Description

As the proprietor of the legendary Sea Tramp Tattoo Company, in Portland, Oregon, Jeff Johnson has inked gangbangers, age-defying moms, and sociopaths; he’s defused brawls and tended delicate egos. In Tattoo Machine, Johnson illuminates a world where art, drama, and commerce come together in highly entertaining theater. A tattoo shop is no longer a den of outcasts and degenerates, but a place where committed and schooled artists who paint on living canvases develop close bonds and bitter rivalries, where tattoo legends and innovators are equally revered, and where the potential for disaster lurks in every corner.




Unimaginable Zero Summer


Book Description

Perhaps you too have experienced the nausea brought on by the arrival of an invitation to a high school reunion. Bookstore clerk and culture junker Verity Presti will soon attend her fifteenth reunion with her boyfriend, the unfortunately but aptly named Charlie Brown, who lives with his parents while training to be an urban shaman--a modern-day medicine man somewhat capable of exorcising ghosts from apartments and cubicles, predicting baseball scores, and channeling lost pets. Verity, angst-ridden and burdened with fifteen years of magnificent failure, will be reunited with Craig and Carolyn, sickeningly perfect high school sweethearts, married now and perfectly sick of each other; Verity's former crush Stan and his wife, Laurel, a frustrated author of angry haikus; and Will, a rage-aholic KJ (that's "karaoke jockey") whose only soft spot is the one he still has for Verity. A growing anxiety permeates the round of cocktail parties that precedes the reunion, causing old affections and animosities to boil over and threaten the dubious complacency of these seven lovable losers. With her trademark sarcasm and uncanny ability to skewer the oddities of contemporary hipster life, Stella has created a cast of endearingly eccentric characters who embody the insecurities and foibles that all of us--former prom desperados, band nerds, the burnout brigade, and loner stiffs--have and hope nobody else will notice.




Would You Kill the Fat Man?


Book Description

From the bestselling coauthor of Wittgenstein's Poker, a fascinating tour through the history of moral philosophy A runaway train is racing toward five men who are tied to the track. Unless the train is stopped, it will inevitably kill all five men. You are standing on a footbridge looking down on the unfolding disaster. However, a fat man, a stranger, is standing next to you: if you push him off the bridge, he will topple onto the line and, although he will die, his chunky body will stop the train, saving five lives. Would you kill the fat man? The question may seem bizarre. But it's one variation of a puzzle that has baffled moral philosophers for almost half a century and that more recently has come to preoccupy neuroscientists, psychologists, and other thinkers as well. In this book, David Edmonds, coauthor of the bestselling Wittgenstein's Poker, tells the riveting story of why and how philosophers have struggled with this ethical dilemma, sometimes called the trolley problem. In the process, he provides an entertaining and informative tour through the history of moral philosophy. Most people feel it's wrong to kill the fat man. But why? After all, in taking one life you could save five. As Edmonds shows, answering the question is far more complex—and important—than it first appears. In fact, how we answer it tells us a great deal about right and wrong.




Why We Get Fat


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Taubes stands the received wisdom about diet and exercise on its head.” —The New York Times What’s making us fat? And how can we change? Building upon his critical work in Good Calories, Bad Calories and presenting fresh evidence for his claim, bestselling author Gary Taubes revisits these urgent questions. Featuring a new afterword with answers to frequently asked questions. Taubes reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century—none more damaging or misguided than the “calories-in, calories-out” model of why we get fat—and the good science that has been ignored. He also answers the most persistent questions: Why are some people thin and others fat? What roles do exercise and genetics play in our weight? What foods should we eat, and what foods should we avoid? Persuasive, straightforward, and practical, Why We Get Fat is an essential guide to nutrition and weight management. Complete with an easy-to-follow diet. Featuring a new afterword with answers to frequently asked questions.




What Would Susie Say?


Book Description

IN WHAT WOULD SUSIE SAY?, Susie Essman sheds the crasser layers to reveal how she went from an anxiety-ridden, struggling stand-up comic to being one of the funniest women on television, playing Susie Greene on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Emerging as one of the most successful performers in her field, Essman goes behind the scenes of a life in comedy with her funny cohorts, including Joy Behar, Rodney Dangerfield, and, of course, Jeff Garlin and Larry David, while also providing sidesplittingly funny wisdom on a range of topics that she's highly unqualified to expound upon, including men, sports, hypochondria, and stepparenthood. WHAT WOULD SUSIE SAY ABOUT... MARRIAGE? "It took me a long time to find the man I was willing to commit myself to. Even the word commit is troublesome. One is committed to a mental institution." MEN WITH DOGS? "As a dog lover, I've researched many different breeds and I've begun to realize that you can tell a lot about a person by what breed of dog they choose to associate with. A bit self-conscious about your cellulite? A guy with a shar-pei is for you. They're hard to find, but cheaper than lipo." THE BEAUTY OF MENOPAUSE? "I guess I just have to accept the fact that I'm going to end up a bald, fat, sweaty, irritable woman with a dry vagina and a full beard who never sleeps and has memory loss so I won't even be able to remember how hot I used to look!" STEPPARENTHOOD? "My mother used to tell me 'you can't buy your kids' love.' Bullshit. You can, and it's exponential. They're like Russian mail-order brides -- the more you spend, the more they love you." WHAT WOULD SUSIE SAY? is Essman's irreverent, refreshingly candid, and hilarious retort to the dubious facts of life that we all face.




The Year of Living Famously


Book Description

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Spunk & Bite


Book Description

Today's writer needs more than just a solid knowledge of usage and composition to write successfully. Bestselling author Arthur Plotnik reveals the secrets to attention-grabbing, unforgettable writing, in this trade paperback edition. Updated with all-new writing exercises, Spunk & Bite will help writers take books, articles, business reports, memos, and even e-mail messages to the next level.




This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers


Book Description

“A luminous, moving and visual record of fleeting moments of connection.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice A visionary work of radical empathy. Known for immersion journalism that is more immersed than most people are willing to go, and for a prose style that is somehow both fierce and soulful, Jeff Sharlet dives deep into the darkness around us and awaiting us. This work began when his father had a heart attack; two years later, Jeff, still in his forties, had a heart attack of his own. In the grip of writerly self-doubt, Jeff turned to images, taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram, writing short, true stories that bloomed into documentary. During those two years, he spent a lot of time on the road: meeting strangers working night shifts as he drove through the mountains to see his father; exploring the life and death of Charley Keunang, a once-aspiring actor shot by the police on LA’s Skid Row; documenting gay pride amidst the violent homophobia of Putin’s Russia; passing time with homeless teen addicts in Dublin; and accompanying a lonely woman, whose only friend was a houseplant, on shopping trips. Early readers have called this book “incantatory,” the voice “prophetic,” in “James Agee’s tradition of looking at the reality of American lives.” Defined by insomnia and late-night driving and the companionship of other darkness-dwellers—night bakers and last-call drinkers, frightened people and frightening people, the homeless, the lost (or merely disoriented), and other people on the margins—This Brilliant Darkness erases the boundaries between author, subject, and reader to ask: how do people live with suffering?